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Many people have raised concerns about introducing modified genes into mosquito population, but nobody seems to care about insecticides usage on mass scale, whi
by viktorcode 5y ago
Many people have raised concerns about introducing modified genes into mosquito population, but nobody seems to care about insecticides usage on mass scale, which leads to proliferation of resistant mosquitos by means of evolution.
I think the bias is that in the first example mosquito genes are considered unnatural, yet in the second nobody cares about genome. "Not directly manipulated means natural"
- highmastdon 5y agoExactly! I think a lot of problems that we have currently are being tackled by fighting symptoms instead of looking at the source. We can't make the world around us work in our ways. We'd be much better off working with the worlds way and improving upon that. With this mosquito problem, I can think of multiple things that need to change: insecticides, herbicides that influence the places where birds nest, birds and other small animals are affected by both insecticides and herbicides because their habitat is being destroyed. Herbicides influence the ground on which we grow crops, the ground gets infertile, fungi and small ground animals aren't working the ground to keep it strong and a welcoming habitat for the whole food chain. As long as we keep killing the smallest in the food chain, we kill eventually the bigger ones, and leave ourselves with problems like this.
- bedobi 5y agoThis species is invasive everywhere outside Africa, constitutes only a tiny fraction of the mosquito population where they exist, and doesn't fill any meaningful ecological role anywhere.